Cloud Data Center Stress Test Feedback Thread (November 2023)

[Kaitlen]

Region: Japan (Tokyo)
Original Home World: NA/Hyperion (Ping Avg. ~110-120ms)
Secondary World: JP/Tonberry (Ping Avg. ~4ms)
Testing - Cloudtest01 - (Ping Avg. 150ms)

From my main home world, I'm used to playing with the above latency for Hyperion and Cloudtest01 feels nearly the same as Hyperion from what I can tell. There is a noticeable difference when switching between Tonberry and Hyperion, but it doesn't make the game unplayable. As long as the PL remains at 0% (which it usually does, since my home ISP is on an NTT line and we all know SE is on NTT too...) actually game play doesn't really change so much. The Cloudtest01 also didn't seem to have any PL, so it was good experience overall.

I did not start with everyone else and experience the 3k login queues, but I'm seeing ~15 people in the queue to get in, which is nothing.

Overall, not much else to say.

Edit: I forgot, zone loading time or even moving within city aethernets are somewhat quicker. Moving within the same zone (i.e. Old Gridania), it feels faster.

[Jeeqbit]

I'm located on the east coast of the US- definitely gotten much more noticeable spikes of lag than I do on the standard NA servers from time to time. The worst it got was in a run of Rabanastre.

I did a run of all 3 Stormblood alliance raids and they were smooth.

[Papa_Wilkins]

If they want a real stress test, why can't we get Eternally Bonded and test things like teleport to partner? There are many things I'd like to test related to optional content.

C'mon @YoshiP, let us use the free eternal bonding for these last few days of the test!

[_Azura_]

I've encountered extremely offensive, racist usernames and search info on the Cloud test servers with no way of reporting them.

[Dysvalence]

Some initial thoughts:

Latency:

Living in the northeast US I can't overstate how much better things are due to the ping. I don't need to spreadsheet multiple lines depending on how laggy the server is on a given day. Instead of stuttering from that one NTT node that doesn't pay it's ISP peering bill, we get reliable connections from cloud and cloud adjacnent infrastructure. PVP goes from a fun gimmick where I die mid DRG LB to something actually worth getting better at and strategizing in. That ping dependent animation lock bug that plagues the game suddenly disappears- I've almost forgotten that I'm playing a game with worse netcode than a '90s shooter. Going back to raiding on west coast and dying to snapshots ~0.7s later just feels awful in comparison.

I also feel like my framerate has slightly increased though I'm not sure if that's just from a smaller population.


Culture:

Playing mostly at weird hours, I've seen plenty of WoLs from JP and EU, and everyone seems to be getting along really well.


Community tooling:

The ephemeral nature of the whole test means that community tools such as hunt trackers aren't updated for the game, and people are flying blind a lot more. I wouldn't say it's explicitly a problem but it does affect testing- hard to stress test everyone rushing to an S rank when comms aren't quite up.


Testing:

For future testing, it would be nice to have a raid food vendor, so we aren't stuck with the one EW vendor food item that has rather horrific stats. Making the test closer to our mains would make problems more noticeable.

More gil would be nice, I've had to funnel 4 alts worth of gil to get a large and all the gil mounts- this is a good chance to try them before buying them on our mains so it'd be nice to see the gil amount increased to 200~250 mil.


Edit: Would be nice to have an option to override the "locked duty" thing in party finder, just so we can tell what we should unlock.


Edit 2: the fact that job skips throw your equipped gear in your regular inventory is infuriating lol

[akarusty]

Playing from UK -
Cloud Data Center 2 - Settles around 80-90 ms (with some fluctuations going above 110)
Chaos Home Server - Around 40 ms

Actions taken so far - Created a character, went through starting cutscenes and then claimed Shadowbringers Tales and also levelled GNB and DNC to 80. Customised hotbar and done one dungeon (Dzemael Darkhold).

Overall experience so far: Plays very smoothly.
Noticeable Performance Difference: A slight graphical delay as DNC between button combos when performing Standard Step or Technical Step - but combos were always successful and did not impact gameplay. I had this once on my home server which was way worse.

[Zwynfalk]

I'm missing several Account-Wide optional items on my Cloud DC character.

I got my subscription rewards, Sleipnir, old promos like the maid and butler outfits, the FFX minions/outfit tokens, and a few others.

But I'm missing 4 mounts (Fat Moogle, SDS Fenrir, Fatter Cat, Kingly Peacock) and the FFVII minions.

[Khryseis_Astra]

So far, the lack of lag has definitely been noticeable! I’m in the Eastern US, usually playing on Crystal/Brynhildr, and my test character is on Cloudtest02. Everything loads in so quickly! I’m not sure how to test my ping with the cloud, but everything just feels better, more fluid. Maybe some of that could be less people, but even in crowded Limsa, I wasn’t seeing any screen stuttering and I could see everyone in the instance, rather than the delay I normally get as everyone draws in.

Didn’t get very far into level 80 since I just started last night after work, but my level 80 on the cloud almost feels as fast as my level 90 on Crystal, with no materia melded!

There was only one instance of lag that I noticed, on the first boss of Copied Factory, and one person actually had a DC symbol by their name for a second, but it was gone almost instantly. I picked that duty specifically because even with limited effects, that one always lags bad for me on Crystal, and it was a much better experience on the cloud.

I echo the poster above that I wish we could see what the locked duties are in the Party Finder, so we know what to unlock with such a limited timeframe. And really that would be a good change on the actual servers too. Keep it faded out, but after the words “Locked Duty” put the name of the duty.

[Ravenblade1979]

I've encountered extremely offensive, racist usernames and search info on the Cloud test servers with no way of reporting them.

i have one on there named Meatball Head. if you were a fan of sailormoon and seen hairstyle i used, you would get it. i see lots of food related puns

[BilonnRaolas]

I'm missing several Account-Wide optional items on my Cloud DC character.

I got my subscription rewards, Sleipnir, old promos like the maid and butler outfits, the FFX minions/outfit tokens, and a few others.

But I'm missing 4 mounts (Fat Moogle, SDS Fenrir, Fatter Cat, Kingly Peacock) and the FFVII minions.

All Mogstation / Store Purchased Items are unavailable on the Test Servers. So anything you bought there, even if it is "Account Wide", won't show up.